Last reviewed: 21 September 2026

English teaching jobs in Greece sit almost entirely in frontistiria, the private afternoon academies that prepare Greek children for Cambridge and IELTS exams. Irish and EU teachers need no visa and no work permit, but every teacher in the sector must file a commencement announcement with the Ministry of Education. Hiring peaks in late August.

Key takeaways

• Frontistiria, private foreign-language centres, are the main employer. Athens and Thessaloniki carry the most vacancies, with year-round academy work in Patras, Larissa and Heraklion.
• Two hiring windows: late August to early October for the main academic intake, and a smaller one in January.
• Irish and EU citizens need no visa or work permit, but do need a Greek tax number (AFM), a social security number (AMKA) and an entry on the Ministry of Education teacher register.
• That register entry is a legal step, not a formality. It is free, filed through gov.gr, and the Ministry has three months to process it.
• Most academies ask for a recognised TEFL certificate of 120 hours or more; a degree widens the range of schools that will interview you.
• Summer resort and camp roles on Crete, Corfu and Rhodes recruit from February to April and are a different market from the academic year.

Who actually hires English teachers in Greece?

Four employer types account for nearly every English teaching job in Greece, and they do not compete for the same teachers. Frontistiria (φροντιστήρια ξένων γλωσσών) are the volume employer: privately owned foreign-language centres that run classes from roughly 2pm to 9pm, because their students are in state school all morning. A mid-sized academy might employ three to eight teachers and run classes of eight to twelve children and teenagers, nearly all of them working towards a Cambridge B2 First, C1 Advanced or C2 Proficiency certificate that carries real weight for Greek university entry and public-sector points.

Above them sit a small number of international and bilingual schools in Athens and Thessaloniki, which pay considerably better but expect a full home-country teaching qualification rather than a TEFL certificate. Below and alongside sit two informal markets: private one-to-one tuition arranged directly with families, which is the single most common way teachers top up academy pay, and business English delivered in-company to Greek professionals, concentrated in Athens. Finally, the seasonal market on the islands hires activity leaders and camp teachers for the May to September tourist season, usually on a package that includes board.

How do the employer types compare?

The trade-off across the four routes is pay against stability, and the seasonal market sits outside that trade-off entirely.

Figures are typical gross ranges reported by teachers and academy owners and vary by city, contracted hours and experience. Statutory minimum pay is set nationally and rose to €920 gross a month on 1 April 2026.

When do English teaching jobs in Greece actually open?

The main window is short and late. Greek academy owners generally do not know their final enrolment numbers until families sign up in the last two weeks of August, so they do not know how many teachers they need until then. Advertising a post in May would be unusual. The practical consequence is that applications sent in June often go unanswered while the same application sent on 20 August gets a reply within a day.

A second, smaller intake happens in January, when academies replace teachers who have left mid-year or add a group. Island and resort roles run on the opposite clock, recruiting February to April for a season that starts in May, which is why some teachers combine a September to June academy contract in Thessaloniki with a summer on Crete rather than treating the two as alternatives.

What do Greek academies ask for?

A recognised TEFL certificate of at least 120 hours is the baseline filter for frontistirio work, and it matters more in Greece than in some markets because academy owners are selling exam results to fee-paying parents. Familiarity with the Cambridge exam suite is the single most persuasive thing you can put on a CV here. A bachelor’s degree is not universally required for academy work, but it widens the range of schools that will interview you and it becomes unavoidable if you want an international school post or if your qualifications need formal recognition for the Ministry register.

Greek is not required in the classroom. Most academies want an English-only lesson and several advertise native or near-native English as a selling point to parents. Conversational Greek helps enormously with the administrative side, particularly the tax office, and is worth starting before you arrive. If you are weighing up which certificate to take first, our comparison of TEFL, TESOL and CELTA for Irish teachers sets out what each one signals to an employer.

What paperwork do you file before your first class?

This is the part most job guides skip, and it is the part that delays people. Teaching in a Greek frontistirio, language centre or as a home tutor is a notified activity under Greek law. Before you begin, you file an announcement of commencement of professional teaching with the Ministry of Education, Sports and Religious Affairs, which enters you on the national Register of Teachers in Tutorial Schools, Foreign-Language Centres and Home Tuition. Since a joint ministerial decision in February 2026, this is done entirely online through the gov.gr teacher register service.

The Ministry lists the procedure as free of charge with a three-month implementation deadline, and it requires a recognised degree, a criminal record extract, medical opinions from a pathologist and a psychiatrist, and solemn declarations under Law 1599/1986. Where your qualifications do not match those of a Greek public-school educator, a certificate of competence in foreign-language teaching is also required. The full document list is published on the Greek point of single contact, EUGO, as procedure 881208. We have broken the whole sequence down in our guide to the requirements for teaching English in Greece.

None of this is a visa. As an Irish or EU citizen your right to work in another EU member state is not in question. The register is a professional notification, closer to signing on to a professional roll than to applying for permission to enter.

How do you actually apply?

Direct approach beats job boards in Greece by a wide margin. Frontistiria are family businesses, most of them without an HR function, and owners fill posts through the people who email them and the people their existing teachers recommend. A short, specific email to twenty named academies in one city in the third week of August will out-perform a month of refreshing listings. Name the city, name the exam levels you are comfortable teaching, attach a one-page CV and say when you can start.

Being physically in the country for that fortnight remains the strongest single move. Many owners want to meet a teacher before offering a contract, partly because they are introducing you to parents. If you cannot travel, a scheduled video interview is now normal and no longer treated as second best. For a sense of how this compares with neighbouring markets, our guides to teaching English in Malta and teaching English in Prague cover two other EU markets with the same visa-free advantage and different hiring rhythms.

Frequently asked questions

Where this sits in our Greece guides

This post covers who is hiring and how to reach them. For the wider picture, start with our pillar guide to teaching English in Greece, then read what Greek academies actually pay after tax and our city guide to teaching English in Athens. Every destination we cover is listed on the teach English jobs pillar page.

Ready to apply?

Greek academies filter on the certificate before they read anything else. Our accredited 120-hour TEFL course meets the baseline frontistiria ask for, and our Level 5 TEFL diploma is the stronger option if you are aiming at the better-paying Athens academies or want a qualification that stands up to the Ministry recognition process. Both are studied online from Ireland at your own pace.

Sources: EUGO Greece, procedure 881208, announcement of commencement of professional teaching; gov.gr, Register of teachers in tutorial schools, language centres and home tuition; European Commission, Your Europe: regulated professions.